Kill Shot

“I wish I could help you, sir, but I honestly don’t know. My best people are on it.”

“I’ve got people on one side of me telling me to declare martial law,” the Man said. “There’s a group of people in the Joint Chiefs of Staff who have already drawn up a contingency plan, but my instincts tell me that’s the wrong approach. I need your honest opinion.”

“I think you should level with the people, sir,” Brognola replied. “You should go on television and tell them we have a dangerous situation to deal with. They should be vigilant, but not fearful.”

The President pondered the advice. “That might work for a short time,” he said. “But if we have a wave of shootings tomorrow, people are going to riot. And if that happens, I’ll have no option but to declare martial law.”

I’ve seen enough cruelty and brutality to understand the difference between garden-variety guilt and genuine evil. Some people claim that there’s no such thing as genuine evil, but they haven’t seen what I’ve seen. I know that pure evil exists because I’ve stared it down countless times. And as long as it continues to appear, I will continue to face it unflinchingly.

—Mack Bolan

All things may corrupt when minds are prone to evil.

—Ovid

43 BC–AD 17

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER ONE

Boston, Massachusetts

Tom Gardner pushed the two-wheeled truck cart out into the bright sunlight that bathed the loading dock. He let his eyes adjust to the sun, then continued toward the orange Cantus Uniform and Linen Service van he’d backed up to the concrete ramp. After pushing the cart a few steps, he gave up on his aging eyes ever adjusting to the bright light after emerging from the gloomy interior of the diesel repair shop. He stopped to put on a pair of sunglasses. Even though the clock had yet to strike twelve, Gardner had already had a long day. He’d gotten an early start, making the first stop on his route before 5:00 a.m., and he only had two stops left.

Once he had the sunglasses in place, Gardner looked around at the bright blue sky rising above the tops of the warehouses, workshops and processing plants that comprised the Boston Marine Industrial Park. It was a sweet route; rather than driving all over the state, most of his stops were clustered around Logan International Airport and the Charles River Basin, meaning he could hit twice as many stops in half as much time as most Cantus drivers, which in turn meant that he earned twice as much money as most other drivers since they worked on commission. The choice route was a perk he’d earned for spending twenty-nine years on the job. The drivers with the most seniority got the best routes, and Gardner had the best of the best. It was hard work, and lugging uniforms and linens in and out of the truck year in, year out had taken a toll on his knees, but they only had to hold out another six months and he could retire.

Gardner glanced at his watch, which was synchronized with the atomic clock used to measure International Atomic Time. A precise man, Gardner knew that the international system of units defined a second as 9,192,631,770 cycles of radiation, and when his watch showed that it was exactly noon eastern time, it was exactly noon eastern time. His watch showed that it was seven seconds away from noon, meaning that he’d arrive at his delivery van at two seconds past noon. Gardner left no detail to chance.

He began the countdown in his head. As always, his timing was perfect. Barring unforeseen traffic jams, he’d finish his route at 1:15 p.m., be home eating lunch by 1:50 p.m. and be napping in front of his television by 2:30 p.m.

He looked at his watch to see the digital display flicker from 11:59.59 to 12:00.00. At that moment he felt a massive blow to the back of his head, and then all consciousness ceased. He didn’t feel the bullet penetrate the back of his skull, drive through his reptilian brain stem, then exit out through his face in a geyser of blood, bone fragments and brain matter. He didn’t hear the report, and he didn’t feel a thing as his body was pitched forward over the two-wheeled truck cart and hurled to the concrete floor of the loading platform. For all his careful planning, Gardner’s retirement had come early.

Manhattan, New York

STEVE GANSEN COULDN’T WIPE the stupid grin off of his face. He’d gambled everything, his entire career as a stockbroker, making a massive investment in what appeared to be a dying industry: book publishing. It had cost him his credibility, the respect of his peers and nearly his job—and his marriage—but today it had paid off. Big.

Not that Gansen was surprised that his apparent long-shot bet had come through. He’d studied a decade’s worth of the company’s quarterly business reports and he knew it was undervalued precisely because publishing was a dying industry. It was dying, but not quite dead yet, and Gansen knew that there were still a few dollars left to be made in the archaic technology of books. Now he clutched the Wall Street Journal in a white-knuckled death grip, rereading the lead story about a giant German publishing operation purchasing the publishing house in which he’d invested, quadrupling his investment, as well as the investments of those clients with the testicular fortitude to stay with him throughout this endeavor.

Gansen now had approximately fifty percent of the client base he’d had going into this investment. Now those fifty percent were much richer for having believed in him.

He glanced up over his paper to see the clock face on the wall of the bank on the opposite side of the small park. It was just about noon. He noticed what appeared to be a person on top of the roof, just above the clock. The person appeared to be crouched down along the edge of the roof, pointing what appeared to be a black broom handle in Gansen’s direction. The clock chimed the first recorded bell tone to indicate that it was exactly noon and Gansen saw a small burst of flame spread out from the end of the broom handle. What he didn’t see was the .30-caliber bullet being propelled his direction at nearly three thousand feet per second. He felt a blow when the bullet entered the top of his head, but when it penetrated his skull, he felt nothing. And he never would feel anything again.

Baltimore, Maryland

SPENCER LOUCKS NURSED his ancient green Jeep Cherokee up to the gas pump. Like everything else in his life, his Jeep—Teal Steel, as he liked to call it—was falling apart. He’d always skated through life, counting on his sense of humor to grease the skids when the going got rough, but things had gone so wrong that even that wasn’t enough anymore. First he’d lost his job. Next, a bout of post-breakup sex with his psychotic ex-girlfriend had led to a situation that Loucks had carefully avoided his entire life: fatherhood.

The kid was the one thing that kept Loucks going. He glanced into Teal Steel’s backseat to make sure the little guy was secure in his car seat. The kid lived with his mother, technically, but she wasn’t really equipped to handle a child so the boy spent most of his time with his dad. She’d been—there was really no way to sugarcoat it—a crack whore. She’d ended up in prison where she served five years for committing multiple felonies. In prison, she’d finally shed her various drug addictions, but she’d picked up an attitude. Now she reacted to every situation as if she was being attacked with a shank in the prison lunchroom.

She’d also found Jesus in prison, and she considered it her mission in life to ensure that everyone else on Earth shared that experience. Unfortunately, the confrontational way with which she dealt with every person she encountered led to her making few converts. Not that she didn’t try; most of the time she left the boy with Loucks because she was busy out working with her church group.

The one thing she had going for herself was a superb body, which was what had attracted Loucks to her in the first place. Now, because of that hot body, Loucks was hopelessly intertwined with a psycho baby mama who would be part of his life for the rest of his life. At least he had the boy. He carried the little guy into the gas station, where he prepaid the attendant five bucks for gas. Five bucks would be barely enough for him to return the boy to his home, the way Teal Steel sucked gas, but it was all he had left after buying diapers and groceries.

Loucks set the nozzle in Jeep’s filler spout and locked in the lever. He looked in at the boy, once again sleeping in his car seat, and waited for the lever to click off when the pump hit five dollars. He didn’t have to wait long before he heard the “click.” He looked at the pump. The pump had shut off at $4.88. Christ. Twelve cents worth of gas was barely a dribble, but given his current financial situation, Loucks needed every penny’s worth that he could get. He looked at the baby in the backseat of the Jeep, then at the man working in the gas station’s partitioned operator’s booth inside the station. His over-developed sense of justice made him want to go and get his twelve cents worth of fuel, but the guy running the station probably didn’t even speak English. Loucks was torn.

He leaned against the Jeep, contemplating not just the situation at hand, but all the bad decisions he’d made that led him to this point in his life. He was forty years old, and he could barely afford to be screwed out of twelve cents worth of gas. He was so lost in thought that he didn’t notice the bright yellow sports car that pulled up beside him. At that moment he vaguely heard a crack in the distance, but before he could register the sound, his brain ceased functioning because of the .30-caliber bullet that pierced his head, splashing gore across the green expanse of the Jeep’s roof.

MACK BOLAN TURNED THE Ferrari 599 GTO into the gas station, driving up the approach at a slight angle to avoid scraping the undercarriage of the low-slung Italian sports car on the pavement. It was, after all, a borrowed ride, a loaner from Hal Brognola, a top official at the Department of Justice and also the man in charge of the supersecret forces operating out of Stony Man Farm. As such, Brognola was the closest thing to a boss that the Executioner had, but he was also one of the soldier’s oldest friends. When the rare opportunity for a vacation had arisen, Bolan had asked the big Fed if he could borrow a set of wheels. He’d expected a well-worn government fleet vehicle just about ready to make the transition to taxicab duty, at best a Crown Victoria with steel wheels and dog-dish hubcaps, at worst some toady little crap wagon.

Instead, Brognola had surprised him with the keys to the Ferrari, luxurious sports coupe with a potent V-12 engine lurking beneath its long, sleek hood. The car, painted a shade of yellow so bright staring at it too long might cause permanent burns on the corneas of a viewer’s eyes, had been confiscated as part of the estate of a drug kingpin that Bolan had brought down. It was a rare treat for the Executioner to be able to enjoy the fruits of his labors.

And he was enjoying the Ferrari very much, as well as the long weekend itself, spent in Nags Head, North Carolina. But even more than the Ferrari, he’d enjoyed the company of the long, lithesome blonde seated in the car beside him.

Patricia Jensen, the stunning woman riding shotgun in the Ferrari, was an old friend. In truth, she was more than a friend; Bolan supposed she was what the hipsters called a friend with benefits. He’d met her years ago, while working on a case in Washington, D.C. He’d been shot in the thigh, and she was the doctor who stitched him up. Bolan knew she would gladly be more than a friend with benefits if he asked her, but the soldier had long since accepted the fact that his life didn’t allow for long-term attachments. People who got too close to him ended up dead.

Bolan inserted his credit card into the pump and began filling the tank with the high-octane gasoline that the finicky Italian thoroughbred demanded. While the fuel filled the tank, he thought about the woman sitting inside the car. He’s known her for nearly twenty years, and she seemed even more beautiful now than when he’d met her. Back then she was fresh out of medical school, finishing her internship. When he first met her, she’d had big hair, as did most other young women at the time. Now her hair was cut in a stylish bob, which made her gray eyes look even more startling than they had when framed by the big MTV hair she’d worn when they’d first met. She maybe had a few lines on her face that she hadn’t had back then, but they just gave her face more character. The rest of her hadn’t seemed to have changed much at all.

Something made Bolan break off his meditation on Jensen’s charms. He couldn’t place it, but for some reason he sensed danger. He had no reason to expect danger in a gas station just off the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, but the soldier hadn’t survived countless battles by ignoring his intuition. He’d scanned the surroundings for potential danger when he drove into the gas station, as he always did whenever he entered a place, an action that was as unconscious as breathing for him, and he’d noted nothing out of place. The only other people at the station were the clerk and a sad sack-looking man filling gas in a rusty old Jeep, neither of whom seemed to present an obvious threat. Bolan noted that the sad sack had a toddler in a car seat in the back of the Jeep, making him an even more unlikely source of danger.

But something was wrong; Bolan could feel it. He started scoping out the surrounding buildings, his hand automatically resting on the Beretta 93-R in the shoulder harness beneath his charcoal sport jacket. There wasn’t much for buildings in the surrounding area. The freeway bordered the station to the west and another gas station sat across the road to the north, but that station was out of business and completely deserted. A fast-food burger joint shared a parking lot with the station, and behind that was a storage rental facility. The only thing even slightly out of the ordinary was an SUV parked along the road to the east of the station, next to a large empty lot. Bolan couldn’t tell if the SUV, an older Chevy Tahoe SS, was empty or not because of the dark tinted windows, but something seemed out of place.

Bolan tapped on the Ferrari’s passenger window to get Jensen to roll down the window and hand him his binoculars so he could get a better look at the Tahoe, but before she could get the window down, Bolan heard a muffled crack and saw the head of the man driving the green Jeep burst open. The angle with which the bullet hit the man’s head told Bolan that it had to have come from the vicinity of the Tahoe.

The soldier threw open the Ferrari’s passenger door and he pulled Jensen from the vehicle. “Get down!” he told her, pulling her down behind the front fender, where the engine block would provide better protection between her and the Tahoe than would the thin aluminum bodywork that cloaked the car’s chassis. Once she was safely behind the fender, Bolan pulled his .50-caliber Desert Eagle from the holster on his hip and leveled it at the Tahoe, but the vehicle had already taken off, all four tires laying down dark stripes on the pavement. The vehicle was conceivably within range of the powerful handgun, but Bolan couldn’t be certain that the vehicle belonged to the shooter so he held his fire.

When he was certain the threat had passed and no further shots were coming, he went to check on the victim, though he knew he would find a corpse. No one could have survived a direct head shot like that, especially when it came from what must have been a high-powered rifle. The man was dead, as Bolan had expected. The child in the back smiled at Bolan.

“Patricia,” Bolan shouted, “take care of the kid.”

Jensen went to remove the child from the hot cab. Before she’d even begun to unbuckle the complex car-seat safety harness, Bolan had jumped into the Ferrari’s driver’s seat and punched the starter button. The 670-horsepower 12-cylinder engine roared to life. Ferrari had built the GTO version of the 599 in extremely small quantities to homologate a production race car, and although it bore superficial similarities to the ordinary 599, the GTO was really a barely civilized race car. Bolan accelerated hard out of the gas station, no longer worried about scraping the undercarriage. Unlike the Tahoe, the Ferrari didn’t leave any rubber, thanks to its Formula One–inspired traction control system. Instead, it accelerated like a Saturn V rocket blasting off for the moon.

The Tahoe had about a minute lead on Bolan. In SS trim the Tahoe was no slouch, its V-8 engine cranking out 345 horsepower, but it was still a three-ton truck with the aerodynamics of an oversized cinder block, while Bolan’s Ferrari, with a top speed of almost 210 mph, was the fastest street-legal vehicle ever built. By the time he was half a mile away from the gas station his speedometer read 170 mph and he’d caught sight of the Tahoe. Ten seconds later he’d closed up the gap enough to read the license-plate numbers, or at least he could have read the license plate numbers if the Tahoe had license plates. A plastic placeholder proclaiming the name of a local used-car dealership occupied the space in the rear bumper reserved for license plates. Bolan noted the name of the dealership but seriously doubted that information would be of use. Most likely the vehicle was stolen and the thief had just tossed the license plates and screwed a random placeholder onto the bumper to avoid suspicion.

There was nothing random about what Bolan saw just above the license plate: a metal panel moving aside to reveal a three-inch hole. Bolan saw a faint flash of light from behind the hole and a bullet pierced his windshield, embedding in the headrest of the Ferrari’s driver’s seat, just millimeters from the soldier’s right ear. A spiderweb of cracks crept out from the hole in the windshield. The speed at which Bolan drove most likely produced enough of a slipstream around the car to move the bullet slightly off its intended path, or else it could have been a kill shot.

The soldier didn’t give the shooter enough time to line up a second shot. He squeezed the paddle shifter on the steering wheel twice, dropping the car into Fourth gear, steered into the left lane and floored the accelerator. The Ferrari took off like it had been shot from a cannon, and before the shooter’s weapon had time to cycle another round he was up beside the Tahoe’s rear bumper, leveling his Desert Eagle at the driver’s window. The soldier’s first round shattered the weakened windshield of his own vehicle and thousands of tiny chunks of safety glass exploded across the Ferrari’s hood, most of which were then blown back into the cabin by the air blast. The second shot penetrated the driver’s window of the Tahoe. Bolan had aimed for a spot just behind the driver’s head, knowing that the spalling that the bullet would experience when hitting the glass at that angle would deflect its course.

His estimate appeared to be correct because the Tahoe suddenly veered hard right and plunged nose-first into the ditch alongside the road. The vehicle was still traveling at well over 100 mph and the right front of the hood caught the edge of the embankment opposite the road, flipping the truck in a barrel roll. The Tahoe cartwheeled across a weed-covered lot until it hit what looked like a rusted old storage tank of some sort, wrapping itself around the tank is if the two were part of some modern-art sculpture.

Bolan braked hard and came to a quick stop. He ran across the lot to try to find survivors to interrogate, but knew the odds were against him when he saw the flames rising up from the vehicle. The Tahoe had careened several hundred yards before hitting the tank, and by the time Bolan had crossed half that distance, the small flickers of flame had turned into a raging inferno. When he was within thirty yards, the Tahoe’s gas tank exploded, sending a wave of heat over the soldier, nearly knocking him off his feet.

Bolan got as close as he could to the burning vehicle, but it was far too late to extract any survivors. Flames rose one hundred feet in the air above the remains of the truck. The wreck might still hold some clues, but they would have to be ferreted out by a team of forensic specialists. The soldier watched the flames consume the vehicle, wondering what he had just stumbled across. Was it a hit of some sort? Bolan knew very little about the victim, but from what he had seen, the man seemed an unlikely target for organized crime. The guy had the air of desperation about him, to be sure, but it didn’t strike Bolan as the sort of desperation of a drug addict or gambler who might owe money to the Mafia. The guy looked like he’d fallen on hard times, but he looked healthy, without the pallor and gauntness of a meth addict. And his baby looked healthier and cleaner than had any child of drug-addicted parents that Bolan had ever encountered. Gambling debts might be more likely, but again, the man didn’t look like he even had the resources to gamble at any level high enough to incur the wrath of the Mob.

But what made even less sense, and what Bolan found more worrisome, was that the victim might have been chosen at random. That made the least sense. Why would someone expend the effort to create a vehicle that was in effect an elaborate mobile sniper hide just to assassinate some random citizen? The only possible answers to that question were all chilling to consider.

CHAPTER TWO

Stony Man Farm, Virginia

At the exact moment the clock struck noon eastern time, snipers had hit targets in every major metropolitan area from Bangor, Maine to Key West, Florida. In all, fifty-six innocent Americans had lost their lives. Exactly one hour later, when the clock struck noon central time, snipers had taken out another seventy-five people in cities from Bismarck, North Dakota, to Mobile, Alabama. By the time Mack Bolan arrived at Stony Man Farm, headquarters of an intelligence organization that operated so far under the radar that only the President of the United States and a few select people knew of its existence, snipers had hit targets in cities within the mountain time zone, killing another forty-nine people, again striking exactly at noon.

Bolan arrived at Stony Man in the battered Ferrari at exactly 2:49 p.m. eastern time. The soldier knew that they had just eleven minutes before more innocent civilians were slaughtered up and down the West Coast. Eleven minutes, and there wasn’t a damned thing Bolan could do about it. He’d been in constant contact with Hal Brognola and the crew at Stony Man Farm since just after the Tahoe had burst into flames. He’d returned to the Farm as quickly as possible, but the panic that had ensued after the shootings had ground traffic to a halt. Even though Bolan had been at the wheel of one of the fastest cars on the planet, it still couldn’t fly, and flight would have been the only way to circumvent the miles and miles of snarled traffic that Bolan had been forced to negotiate.

Normally the state of the borrowed Ferrari would have required a bit of explanation, but Brognola and the crew at Stony Man had far more important matters to attend. Like trying to prevent another wave of killings on the West Coast when clocks in the pacific time zone struck noon. Bolan entered the War Room.